I'm a Transgender Man and I Can Still Be Misogynistic

I’ve used misogyny as a coping mechanism for my gender dysphoria.

How many ways can one be a woman? I was told there were three. There were the athletic women — the women that forego wearing makeup and play sports and who don't exactly know how to put an outfit together. This woman is also called “the tomboy.” There were the “girly girls,” who wear pink and get their nails done and always smell like vanilla or flowers. And then there were “emo lesbians,” who supposedly were the girls and women with thick black eyeliner and skater shoes and a love for all things anime. Most of my friends were “emo lesbians.” And then there was me, a person who didn't fit into any of these boxes, boxes that folks of all genders feel limited by at least once in their lives. Regardless, I was labeled the “tomboy.”

In my adulthood, I eventually figured out why every brand of femininity didn’t quite fit me — including tomboy. I figured out why I didn’t feel I could relate to girls and the feminine rituals my mom introduced to me as “fun” and “normal” growing up. The answer, of course, had a lot to do with the fact that I was a trans boy.

I'm now at a good place in my life where I’ve fully realized my gender identity and I have access to the hormone therapy I need to masculinize myself to suit my comfort level. But as I take steps towards becoming the Sebastian I want to be and see in the world, I've become painstakingly aware of the negative messages I've received about femininity over the years, including the boxes that were drawn around me. I now realize how the misogyny I've internalized from my upbringing is playing a part in how I feel about my transness.

Since the process of transitioning takes time, I find myself getting extremely impatient and having feelings of loathing toward my femininity — “the femininity with an expiration date” as I tend to see it. Lately, it feels like my transition is a race to erase anything femme about me, even the lipstick and booty shorts I treasure. I've noticed myself trying to water down my identity to one binary, masculine gender. It's proven to be a fruitless endeavor.

Along with feelings of loathing toward my own femininity, I sometimes catch myself feeling deep resent towards girls and women in my life, something I've felt since I was a little kid. While I refused to wear dresses, refused to be small, refused to forgo belching in favor of being “ladylike,” little girls like my sister and best friend represented the template to which I was compared, in hope that I would try to imitate it. I loved my sister, but I hated how much her love of pink and all things feminine were celebrated fiercely. I was forever the tomboy, a phase I was expected to grow out of as stereotypical femininity was conflated with maturity. My sister quickly became a symbol of my otherness within my own family and she suffered for it — I was often unkind and even cruel to her in retaliation for an identity and aesthetic she enjoyed and was strongly encouraged to further embrace by our parents and society.

Over the years, I had fewer and fewer friends who were girls. Being cruel to feminine folks in my youth felt like rebellion against my parents, venting the rage I had for the girls who were “doing gender right,” making me look bad. But my childish condemnation of femininity slowly faded, morphing into purely concentrated feelings of insufficiency. Next to a woman or feminine person, I often feel that I just don't add up. This feeling, “trans identity” I would later come to call it, upset me so much that I saw the fabulous femmes in my life as reminders of what I'm not and what I should try to be no matter how uncomfortable it felt. Before I came to terms with my firm desire to transition, I admired the care my femme friends put into their appearance and would painstakingly take notes on what parts of their look I would want to adopt.

It's funny to double back and poke holes in these ever-present thoughts and insecurities. Femininity is beautiful and admirable, and I want to praise my beautiful friends for who they are and what about them has gotten me awe-stricken, whether it's glittery nails or a flawless highlight. And I do — I just have to wrestle with my self hatred later. I know that these feelings are problematic for myself and my beautiful friends, so I try to stay mindful of that as much as possible.

On the flip side (if we’re talking about gender as a binary thing), there’s plenty of stress to go around in the masculine department as well. As many of us in the queer community know, there is such a thing as a problematic trans man.

I see so many of the trans men I look up to on my Instagram feed talking exclusively about things like their fitness goals and their first chest hair. Of course, I don't think there's anything wrong with showing off and being proud of your body. To me, a naive onlooker and an eager student of masculinity, these posts thrill me and make me look forward to my transition. But others confuse me, forcing myself to question: what are we really working towards? What is this thing called masculinity, and why do we want it as society packages it to us? Observing this hypermasculine brand of masculinity in my newsfeed concerned me, making me rethink my transition for the sake of not having to deal with not being “manly enough,” too.

For many trans men, growing up being compared to women who performed femininity in a way that invited praise and seemingly robbed us of affection is the norm. And many a trans man who fiercely rejects femininity in favor of masculinity that is damaging enough to combat any feelings of inferiority can be born from that. This almost happened to me...except, like when being a girl was pushed on me in childhood, this singular state of being simply does not feel comfortable to me either. I am a man, but that’s not where my personhood ends. I’m a man and I love to wear lipstick and short skirts. I’m a man who loves to act “girly” and submissive in and outside of the bedroom.

If I’m to honor and maintain my own femininity in a genuine way throughout my transition, I must honor and praise the femininity that lies within us all, without letting my confusing childhood make me feel threatened by other femmes. The misogyny that bubbles up for me sometimes is not because femininity is the enemy (duh); it's because a society where binary gender identities are enforced and policed is oppressing both me and my femme friends’ personal expression and development. I’ve used misogyny as a coping mechanism for my gender dysphoria, for my anger towards folks who can’t accept me for the girly man I am, for all the years I went hating myself without knowing the validity of my identity. But the truth is, we feminine folks of all gender identities are actually very much in this together.

The truth is femininity is subversive and resilient. It is taking what you want despite the odds against you. What is wrong is the men who try to change and defeat femininity, who endanger the safety and sacredness of femmes every day.

I vow to never be that man, now and later in my life. Instead, I will stay true to my masculinity, a masculinity that is fluid and loving and open. I will get rid of my chest and my reproductive organs, but I will never try to excise the flowering femininity in my heart. I have a long way to go with building up confidence about my gender presentation and body, but I do and always will check myself when I envy or resent a femme. The femmes in my life have become role models for me instead of competition, setting an example of resilient femininity and fearless gender nonconformity.

I know now that the soft, playful, sparkling side of me and others did not create this pain I feel. It came from the people who made me feel unsafe, the people who first wanted to be a girl and then wanted me to choose between “man” and “woman.” Well, to those people I say: you can kiss my booty short-wearing ass.